


Resurrection - Continuance (Resurrection series, Chapter 9

by Rhyo



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universes, M/M, Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 09:21:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/796561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhyo/pseuds/Rhyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus is trying to adjust to his new life when a bit of his past comes back. Set after Dolimir's Resurrection VI.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resurrection - Continuance (Resurrection series, Chapter 9

## Resurrection - Continuance

by Rhyo

Hmm, I see 852 Archive (or someone on their behalf) has been posting stories up here on AO3. I would have preferred to have been asked first, although I understand that it is a good thing that a FF story archive not die. Can't remember when I wrote this, probably 2003/4? or thereabouts. I liked Dolimir's Resurrection series and the concept of Blair becoming the hard-ass one and the one the shadowy covert ops groups stole.

Thanks to Dolimir for not only letting me play in her sandbox but encouraging to post. Also thanks to the Sen_Betas, especially Caro, Pam and Fletcher.  


This is a continuance of Dolimir's Resurrection series - I believe it is Chapter 9. The series is up here on AO3, http://archiveofourown.org/works/214377/chapters/321944  


* * *

I'd already had two personalities. It wouldn't be true to say that I had split personalities, more that I had a personality that had been subsumed -- drowned, as it were -- in the newer, stronger, harder one. And now I was becoming a third person. I've even started to think of the first two personalities by name, Blair and Mallory. I don't answer to either of those names; these days people call me Sandburg usually and Marcus occasionally. But in my head I am Blair and Mallory and... whoever it is I am becoming. 

It occurred to me the other day that David Lash had been frighteningly prophetic. Who am I now, indeed. What am I now, I sometimes wonder, too. 

Blair had been an academic and a free soul. The son of a flower child and wanderer, he had seen the world by his gentle mother's side and learned to trust freely, naively. He had been full of energy and youth, open on the surface but a little reserved underneath, content to study and watch--and then he met his Holy Grail, his Sentinel, his Jim. He'd spent four years by Jim's side, four years of discovery and friendship with a few side-helpings of peril and adventure. The partnership had been put to the test in the fountain at Rainier when Blair drowned and the pull of Jim's love and need and fear brought him back from beyond death. After the fountain, the two friends had been drawing closer, sorting out misunderstandings and harsh words, moving on toward some undefined new point. They'd never reached that new point; instead Blair had been ripped away from that shared world by a covert ops group that required a Guide's talents. 

And then, when Blair knew he couldn't go on any longer, when he was ready to let his captivity kill him, Marcus Mallory had burst forth. Blair had spent enough time poking around in Jim Ellison's psyche to see what had, for a time, made Ellison an effective and deadly Army Ranger and covert ops agent. From those roots Mallory was born, sired equally from Blair's anger and fear and the dark side of Jim Ellison. 

Mallory was everything the ops group wanted Blair to be. Cold, hard, brutal. An efficient fighter, a no-nonsense trainer and field backup to his students. As Jim had done before him, Mallory pushed Blair down, out of the line of fire, and stood over him, protecting him. But Mallory had protected Blair so thoroughly that Blair had retreated deep within, becoming almost completely Mallory. When it became clear that what was left of Blair was going to die because of the things he was required to do in the name of the cause, Mallory did the only thing left that he could do -- he destroyed the core of the organization and the man in power behind it. That left Blair free to demand the one thing in life he wanted: to return to Cascade and Jim. Blair got what he wanted, all the while knowing there would be a long hard fall in Cascade and that fall could be the thing that would finally kill him; it would be worse than any punishment ever inflicted by Shafer. But still they went. 

It had taken his return to Jim for Blair to really stir to life again, for the emotions and empathy that had defined Blair to slowly emerge. Blair and Mallory were often at odds and were both stubborn and I was starting to have migraines trying to mediate between them. Mediate with myself. Even though Jim had astonishingly accepted them -- we, us, me, whoever I am now -- we had trouble accepting him. Not for who he was; he was still Jim, essentially unchanged, but for how he unconditionally accepted us, back into his life and arms and heart. It just didn't seem possible that such a place could or would exist. Blair wanted to sleep twined with his Sentinel, his Jim -- Blair wanted to sleep inside his Jim, to bask and to savor -- but Mallory often had to sleep alone, too restless, too paranoid, too angry to accept the closeness and comfort and love. And I am just... afraid, sometimes. Afraid of Jim and the power he has over us. 

It was early evening, midweek, and I was tired and not as cautious as I should have been, thinking about too many people trying to live in one tired head. That morning Mallory had let Blair come out, into the open, and sit on the roof of the loft in the rising sun to meditate. Blair had been afraid of heights, but Mallory hadn't been allowed to be afraid of anything. I am somewhere in between the two and while I was happy to be in the clean morning air on the roof, I made sure I was sitting well back from the edge. In exchange for the morning rooftop excursion, Mallory had demanded a full and exhausting physical workout. It had been a very rough day and I found myself cursing Blair's early morning meditations, the long day at the PD and Mallory's self-punishing workout as I walked up the stairs to the loft, opening the door and stepping inside. 

Better to be a _tabula rasa_ , I thought, a blank slate that could be wiped clean of the past, of multiple personalities, of fear, of pain... 

"Hey, Mallory, losing the edge, are we?" 

I didn't need to turn to recognize the voice. "Hartman." 

It could have been worse. Hartman was not the deadliest one I left behind me. And the cold barrel of the gun pressed against the back of my neck told me that he was still an overconfident fool. If he wanted me dead he should have shot me already and if he thought he was going to take me back he'd find that he was mistaken. I let them take me once with barely a struggle. That would never happen again. I'd go down fighting this time and take as many of them with me as I could. 

We stood still a moment, Hartman breathing harshly in my ear. Finally he pulled the automatic out of my waistband holster and pushed me into the loft ahead of him, so that I stood in the middle of the room and he stood just inside the open door. I turned to face him. I needed to get complete control quickly -- Jim had been leaving the station right behind me and Hartman's training would have him shooting to kill. That was the only thing my dueling identities agreed on: we had to protect Jim. 

Shafer had kept two levels of operatives, the elite group that the Sentinels and I had belonged to, and a second tier group of operatives with fewer enhanced senses. Hartman had been in that second group. Not as deadly as the Sentinels -- or me -- but still dangerous. 

Hartman had put my gun down on the table by the front door and stood in the classic shooter's pose, his gun targeted on the center of my forehead. At this distance he wouldn't miss. I spread my hands wide and took a step toward him. Hartman's sight, scent and taste were enhanced and I knew how to overwhelm them. I concentrated my thoughts on Jim and the wonder of Jim's touch and how his beautiful, cool hands felt sliding across my body; arousing and soothing... 

My heart rate sped up and my skin flushed in reaction to thoughts of Jim. I gathered my emotions and pheromones and projected them at Hartman, smiling slightly when he took a step back as it all washed over him. 

"Stop," he said, taking another step back. "I just want to talk, I just want..." 

"I want you to drop the gun, asshole," Jim spat from behind him. "No sudden moves, nice and easy, and you'll live through this." 

Hartman responded to both the menace and the command in Jim's voice and immediately put his gun on the floor and slid it away with his foot, all the while keeping his eyes on me. "Well, well. The first time I ever got the drop on you. Not bad for someone that was only a 3-sense, huh? But then, you were the Master Guide, the one they always saved for the best, the full Sentinels. They only let us work with you when you were between missions." His face twisted. "Or between Sentinels." 

Hartman had loved Jason, as much as anyone in that twisted group could love another. Maybe even as much as Jason had loved me. I felt the long-denied and deeply buried pain of Jason's death hit me like a sucker punch in the solar plexus. I thought I had controlled my reaction, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Jim move toward me. I didn't want to tell him about Jason, didn't want to tell him how Jason had died, but I knew I would tell him. Some day. 

Hartman looked around the loft. "You made a new life for yourself." 

"No," Jim said, voice icy, his gun still unwaveringly aimed at Hartman's chest. "He's come back to the life he was taken from." 

I watched Hartman's nostrils flare as he tried to sense and read Jim the way he'd been taught. The way I'd taught him. Suddenly I felt old and tired, watching Hartman strive for control and seeing it elude him. "Stand down, Jim. He's not going to hurt us." 

"This is one of your old students?" 

"Yeah." 

"I won't let this happen again, Sandburg. Anyone coming for you is going to have to go through me first." 

"I know," I said softly, pitched for Jim's ears only. "I believe that." I'd heard Jim's occasional nightmare, and pieced together the dream -- they were coming again to take me away, this time forever, and Jim couldn't stop them. I reached out and tapped his hands, wrapped so tightly around the gun. "It's okay. I trust you, Jim." Reluctantly, he lowered the gun and re-holstered it. 

Hartman paced the room, agitated. I watched him, knowing that he wasn't a threat any longer, he was just hurt and confused and looking for something I couldn't possibly give him. Answers. Salvation. He stopped in front of a bookcase and picked up a framed photo. 

It was a picture of Jim and Blair, taken a long time ago. Blair was happy, laughing, dressed in layers of thrift-store flannel and denim, his long hair loose and flying in the wind. Beside him, Jim looked like he was trying to enjoy himself but was still a bit too tightly wound to really show it. Interesting. If I were to allow a candid photo to be taken now, Jim would be the relaxed and happy one and I... wouldn't. 

"This is you," Hartman said softly. "Before." He looked up at the scars on my face and neck and my short hair. The hair had been the first thing they'd taken -- after my freedom, of course. 

"No. That's someone I once was. There is a difference. But, yes, I didn't always look like this. Sound like this. Act like this. Once I was just a nave and foolish grad student. Who was careless with his research and his notes and paid the price for it." I closed my eyes against the memories of waking up from the drugs that first day. Memories of waking in a cell, hands and feet bound, terrified that if I had been taken, surely Jim had, too... 

From somewhere deep within, Mallory snarled at me to snap to and push the memories and emotions away. Focus. "What do you want, Hartman?" 

"I can't do this on my own. There's no one in charge now. I need you, the rest of us need you. Everything is just out of control and no one understands. You have to come back---" 

Jim had been listening to this point -- not calmly listening -- but that was too much for him. "No. He's never leaving here, never going back." 

I looked at Jim's cold, angry face and smiled fondly. "No one will ever take me back, Jim. I promise." I folded my arms tightly across my chest and looked at Hartman. "Unlike you, I was not a volunteer. Not that you could really be called a volunteer, either. You had no idea what you were getting into, did you?" 

"I wanted to serve my country." 

"Such a sweet lamb to the slaughter," I murmured. I wanted to feel rage against Shafer, against the whole ops section, but instead I felt... guilty. Once it had been laid out for me -- the threat to Jim and Naomi -- I'd become complicit. "I knew. Knew. I watched as they brought in a new group every year. Fresh and eager and so, so proud of those enhanced senses. I knew what they were going to do to you to make you learn to use those senses for their benefit. And so many of you died. Finally it was just too much and I ended it." 

"You left a mess behind." 

"I was trying to set an example. Leave a warning. Was I successful?" 

"Yes. Shafer's death was messy and public. The others were a little more discreet." 

"At the time," I said meditatively, "I was only sorry I couldn't bring Shafer back to life and kill him again. And that I didn't draw his death out, make him suffer like I'd wanted him to." 

"And now?" Jim asked softly. 

I shrugged. "I don't regret his death." I smiled a feral little smile. "He taught me that strategy himself. The others were just as necessary but less personal. I'm just sorry it took someone else's death to finally push me over into doing it." 

"Don't you see," Hartman said. "That was the only life we knew. They took care of us, took care of our environment. You helped us when things got bad. I've been trying to live in the city and the smells, the strange foods, I can't control it on my own. Suarez killed himself, did you know that? He couldn't stop hearing all of the people all of the time." 

I said nothing, but mentally bowed to Shafer, the master of control. He had made them all dependent on him and the environment he provided. Safe to set free for short periods of time to complete missions, but always returning to the comforting nest, like the semi-tame, wounded hunting falcons they were. Always returning to Shafer's iron hand and the false comfort of the Master Guide. My part in all of it turned my stomach. 

Hartman turned desperate eyes to me. "We need your help, Mallory. Help us get free, get our own control back." 

I should have turned him away. Mallory had known they would come and had made plans to deal with them when they did. Instead, I tossed the things Mallory had planned to do out and the window and I wrote my cell number on a card and gave it to him. "I will help you and the others that are left. One at a time and on my own terms. Go back, talk to them and tell them how it has to be. Then call me and we'll work it out. And it's Sandburg now." 

Hartman looked down at the card and then back up at me. "I... thank you, Sandburg." He reached out to touch me and I pulled away, unwilling to submit to the contact. He nodded at Jim and bent to retrieve his gun, but Jim's low growl stopped him. 

"Go." Hartman, knowing a threat when he heard one, went. 

Jim went to the door and set all of the locks and chains and I watched his stiff back. Blair wanted to wrap his arms around his Sentinel and feel those powerful arms enclose him in return. Mallory was skittish about being touched at all, about letting down barriers. I was just afraid. 

But Jim, the center of my life, didn't force me to move or ask. Instead I felt his arms go around me, loosely, and I stood passively in his embrace, permitting myself to be held. 

"Why, Marcus?" he whispered. "You don't have to help them. You walked away from that life." 

I shook my head and then leaned my head back on Jim's powerful shoulder. "Mallory could walk away and leave them to rot. Blair can't. I can't, either. I feel responsible for them. I was their teacher once and I can help them now." 

I felt Jim's nod. "Then _we_ will. You and I, Marcus. Never alone." 

* * *

  
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